Compact high-Q, low-loss mmW transmission lines and power splitters in RF CMOS technology

A set of slow-wave transmission lines designed in the BiCMOS9-MW technology from STMicroelectronics is characterized up to 110 GHz. State-of-the-art measured quality factors are obtained: 40 at 60 GHz, and more than 50 at 90 GHz. These transmission lines are also quite compact, thanks to a high effective relative permittivity, from 8 to 15 for a characteristic impedance, respectively between 70 Ω and 30 Ω. Based on these results, two power dividers using these slow-wave transmission lines are designed at millimeter-wave frequencies (77 GHz and 94 GHz). The measured S parameters present insertion loss lower than −3.5 dB and return loss better than −20 dB, at the operating frequency. Moreover the use of slow-wave transmission lines leads to a miniaturization of 70 % compared to a classical power splitter designed with microstrip or CPW transmission lines.

[1]  J.R. Long,et al.  Shielded passive devices for silicon-based monolithic microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits , 2006, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[2]  Jae Jin Lee,et al.  A Slow-Wave Microstrip Line With a High-Q and a High Dielectric Constant for Millimeter-Wave CMOS Application , 2010, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[3]  P. Ferrari,et al.  Time domain characterization of lossy arbitrary characteristic impedance transmission lines , 1994, IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters.

[4]  C. Nguyen,et al.  Multilayer Design Techniques for Extremely Miniaturized CMOS Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Distributed Passive Circuits , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[5]  Jean-Marc Duchamp,et al.  Shielded coplanar striplines for RF integrated applications , 2009 .

[6]  T.S.D. Cheung,et al.  On-chip interconnect for mm-wave applications using an all-copper technology and wavelength reduction , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2003. Digest of Technical Papers. ISSCC..

[7]  M.-C.F. Chang,et al.  60 GHz CMOS Amplifiers Using Transformer-Coupling and Artificial Dielectric Differential Transmission Lines for Compact Design , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[8]  Francesco Svelto,et al.  Design of Low-Loss Transmission Lines in Scaled CMOS by Accurate Electromagnetic Simulations , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[9]  J.A.M. Geelen,et al.  An improved de-embedding technique for on-wafer high-frequency characterization , 1991, Proceedings of the 1991 Bipolar Circuits and Technology Meeting.

[10]  J. Fournier,et al.  High-Q Slow-Wave Coplanar Transmission Lines on 0.35 $\mu$m CMOS Process , 2009, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[11]  Didier Belot Millimeter-wave design in silicon technologies , 2010, 2010 Topical Meeting on Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems (SiRF).